I'm an associate editor at Forbes, part of the team responsible for our signature issues: The Forbes 400, Global Billionaires and America's Richest Families. As a writer, I cover these wealthy business builders as well as other entrepreneurs. Before Forbes, I also reported on entrepreneurs for Inc. magazine and attended Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has pushed ahead to make his state the leader in the new push to tighten gun laws. The governor’s thinking offers a glimpse at what other states and the federal government might do, and helps to refine the outlook for the nation’s $32 billion gun industry.

Cuomo and a strikingly bipartisan group of state legislators say they’re close to a bill that would ban assault weapons and large magazines and establish new measures to avoid firearms falling into the hands of the mentally ill.

The governor’s exact language is particularly important. He has branded semi-automatic rifles, the type of weapon used in the Newtown, Conn., massacre, as assault weapons. This will surely displease Second Amendment advocates, as well as the gun industry: Gun companies like to label semi-automatics as modern sporting rifles, an attempt to distance their guns from the very connotations that Cuomo is placing on them.

A modern sporting rifle sounds like something you meet use to hunt. An assault weapon sounds wicked. This is not lost on Cuomo.

“No one hunts with an assault rifle. No one needs ten bullets to kill a deer,” he said in his State of the Union.

Cuomo and legislators would like New York’s law to mirror California’s, making those two states the toughest on guns in the nation. New York lawmakers would limit detachable magazines to seven rounds from today’s 10 rounds, and make background checks necessary for ammunition as well as guns.

The White House intends to lead its own efforts to broaden restrictions on firearms. It’s unclear whether the administration would opt for something as tough as Cuomo’s proposals. “The president and I are determined to take action,” said Vice President Joe Biden, who is leading the White House’s anti-violence task force. “This is not an exercise in photo opportunities.”

These early signals of a harsh reality for semi-automatic rifles hits the Freedom Group hardest. Freedom Group, a roll-up of several gunmakers—including Bushmaster, the company that made the rifle used in Newtown— owned by Cerberus Capital, is the nation’s largest manufacturer of rifles. Before now, Freedom Group was counting heavily on the rising interest in semi-automatic rifles: After sales rose by 23.4% in the third quarter, Freedom Group noted: “These increases were primarily the result of strong market demand for modern sporting products, as well as volumes associated with our handgun introductions and our new shotgun offerings.” Meanwhile, Freedom Group noted a decrease in sales of traditional rifles.

Semi-automatic rifles are sold not only in small-town gun shops, but at major retailers. Indeed, the world’s largest retailer is America’s largest gun-seller: Wal-Mart lists 10 different modern sporting rifles on its website. Other major retailers include Dick’s Sporting Goods and Cabela’s. The impact of any new legislation would injure the sporting goods stores more than Wal-Mart; simply the size of Wal-Mart’s business ensures it could absorb the hit.

As for America’s other two big gunmakers, Smith and Wesson and Sturm, RugerSturm, Ruger, they have been propelled more by the increased demand for small pistols that fit concealed carry laws than by semi-automatic rifles. “I would characterize that most of the growth in new products for us has been in handguns, but that’s what we’ve been introducing. You know that’s where all the new products have been coming from,” Ruger CEO Mike Fifer said on a conference call with analysts.

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IT is clear you dont know what you`re talking about, SO until you do, dont try to be an expert on the .223. It Will Kill Anything on two or four legs, UNLESS , YOU ARE SHOOTING IT IN THE ASS! THIS is the problem PEOPLE using BAD information. The AR-15 And A Savage .223 (a Common Deer rifle) Are only different Because the AR Has A PLASTIC PISTOL GRIP, THEY ARE the exact same caliber, BOTH ARE SEMI-AUTOMATICS, AND, IF it takes you 10 shots to kill a deer, you should not deer hunt, because you`re causing the animal to suffer, HUNTERS DONT DO THAT!

and what about the 200,000 deaths per year from iatrogenic causes in the US…. one could say Hospital and Doctors are bringing down U.S. life expectancy more…

And the sad part about all you people that stand on those apple crates and shout to the world how guns kill…..none….nope…not a one has the balls to address the real problem.

Society and …. http://www.ssristories.com/ind…

Listen to all the people in Biden’s meeting…

Not even he will have to balls to bring the subject up because what the government is trying to do is not gun control….it’s taking more out of what the founding fathers with goose quill feather pens in hand and the penmanship of poets set down and wrote… ………….. .the American dream and penned it the Constitution.

In which starts with the words “We the People….”

Sad, our union of states have got much bigger but the core of people in the United States of America has become much smaller in taking those words that were so gratefully and sincerely written for all of US and shield themselves from the small number of nonbelievers that are trying to bring down America.

The cause of the greatest union of people on God’s Earth going to hell in a hand basket will be from the believers of the Constitution not taking a stand and not from the small number of nonbelievers that only want to take.

Sad….The Power of US Government was to be “few and defined.”

The Power of the States were to be “numerous and indefinite.”

And today America has let all the power meant for We the People freely go into the hands of Big Government and have no one…..no one to blame but the ones that those founding fathers so gracefully gave the power too…

Really sad.

Oh! by the way…those numbers of deaths in Mexico that you see up there…

To keep and bear arms was first recognized as a constitutional right under Article 10 of the Mexican Constitution of 1857…….

BUT in 1917 and also in 1972 Article 10 of the present Constitution was reformed…..

Most all the words in that article from above is no more than propagandist bullsh!!

the deaths in Mexico along prove it…

Ain’t but two enemies of the gun………….rust and politicians.

George Washington serve his country eight years and went back to his farm….he didn’t even give his Farewell Address before he left….

Some say it was because he was to embarrass over having wooden teeth but if you ask an O’fart like he….it was because he was fed up with the turnips spending all of We the People’s dreams.

The American Government was $71 million dollars in debt in 1790…that was six years before George left and look at it today….$16 trillion…not from character sitting on Jenkins Hill in Washington D. C. but from a bunch of jackasses and elephant’s acting like turnips.

222 years and not ONE DAMN saving bill.

And getting back to the reason George left after only eight…..

Just fill a large barrel with apples….let them set….and once you see just one going to rot…..if you ain’t got the balls to get it out of that barrel…you gonna have a barrel of rotten apples for that reason….NO BALLS to do what is right for the rest.

STOP with all this propagandist bullsh!! and put character back in Government. Been thirty-seven years since America has had a trade surplus and not one of those turnips are doing anything about that.

1975…that was the last year…today Ben has little Timmy at the US Treasury printing up $85 billion dollars a month….people that is YOUR DAMN DEBT he printing…. but no one in Government is doing what needs to be done.

Not even the American people….

Retail has brainwash the consumer that buying foreign made so-call cheaper items will make them wealthier….well, there were not 46 million Americans on food stamps in 1975 nor were 20 million American workers(union and non-union) unemployed.

Wal*Mart has their Global Procurement Office in China….they also put less than 5% foreign in all their stores in China….READ THAT AGAIN

Retail makes NOTHING….it only moves a countries currency…..DUH!!!! and the turnips in Government can’t figure out why America is in this mess.

Well, the teaching of ignorance got US here….but this O’fart will tell you now…it sure as sh!! ain’t gonna get US out.

Made in America is the only way out of this mess because foreign made put US here.

Sigh. Crazies on the left, and crazies on the right–and not a one of them that will address the actual problems. Any effort to reduce firearm deaths (after all, that’s what gun control is about…right?) needs to start with a few facts:

1) The Second Amendment has largely been interpreted (by the Supreme Court, as well as lesser federal courts) to mean that individual people have the right to carry and use weapons meant for war. This has led to a truly massive number of guns (280+ million). Any attempt to reduce firearm fatalities by imposing future limits on who can own guns, etc. must ALSO contend with the MASSIVE POOL of guns already in circulation.

2) There are two very different types of people who use guns to murder civilians. There are the mentally ill, who are largely responsible for the massacres in crowded areas that account for relatively few (although truly horrific) deaths–and there are the criminals that are responsible for 99% of the rest of the murders. While the weapon of choice for the massacres is a semi-auto rifle, the vast majority of murders (nearly 70%) with firearms are caused by hand-guns.

3) None of what’s been proposed addresses accidental shootings/deaths at all. In 2000, accidental shootings accounted for 1/3 of all firearm-related injuries, and ~5% of all firearm-related deaths. A disproportionate number of these accidents are caused by those aged 8-14.

Smart-gun technology has been in the works for years, and is relatively successful (an article I can no longer find put it at a success rate of 90-95%.) Such technology has not advanced much in the past 4-5 years because gun manufacturers are adamantly opposed to it. Achieving 99.999% success-rate with this technology, and then mandating that it is required for all firearms (no grandfathering, no exceptions, etc.) would go a long way to making sure that only the registered owner of the firearm can use it.

A mandated program of gun safety for everyone, starting at a fairly young age, could significantly impact #3. Accidents account for far more injuries and deaths than the mass killings, even if they draw far less media attention.

The only true way to reduce the number of firearm-related deaths to a number more in line with other developed countries is to change our culture to reflect theirs (for instance, Japan has a significantly lower crime rate than most of the other first-world nations). While this idea may have merit, it would take years to see any result; the more immediate returns on safety-education and smart-gun controls should be felt within months.

And so, instead of actually participating in a meaningful discussion, you resort to latching on to a couple of sentences you can spin into fear-mongering. Fine. Changing our culture so that the concept of murdering people is anathema is apparently the worst thing possible for you to conceive; let’s just grant you that. We won’t do it.

What about the rest of what I proposed? Do you find problems with the approach of enforced smart-gun use and safety education? What about help for the mentally ill that cause these headlines in the first place?

What’s your idea of a real, practical solution–that also preserves the intent and substance of the Second Amendment?